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What Web Metrics Are Important? 13 points posted over 3 years ago |
In e-commerce, measuring key performance indicators (metrics) is an important strategy. Most Web marketers realize this and know they need Web metrics. The problem is, they usually don't know what to measure. This article hopes to help them out. |
In a nutshell, Web metrics are those metrics that are used to monitor and assess a Web site's activities, with the end-goal of measuring how well the site is performing vis-a-vis its objectives.
Web metrics are also sometimes referred to as Web analytics but some writers make a distinction between the two.
In e-commerce, measuring key performance indicators is an important strategy. Most Web marketers realize this and know they need Web metrics. The problem is, they usually don't know what to measure. This article hopes to help them out.
When it comes to sales and lead generation, one of the important Web metrics to measure is "page views per session." This measures the number of times your pages are viewed by visitors to your Web site. If you're selling business-to-business advertising, page views per session will tell your prospective advertisers what kind of exposure they can expect from your site.
Another important metric is "time on site," which measures the time visitors spend on your site. This will tell you how effective your content or offers are in holding the attention of your audience.
Regardless of the purpose of your Web site, these first two metrics are important measures for you. As an e-business, the other metrics that are important to you should be those that you can directly control, and these include average sale price, conversion rate and visitors. Most good Web analytic systems can track this information for you.
The average sale price refers to the average amount that customers pay you per product. You can bring this up or down by simply changing your product prices.
Conversion rate refers to the percentage of your visitors who either buy a product, click an ad or perform some other desired action on your Web site. Having a low conversion rate means your visitors are not behaving the way you want, which tells you that there is a problem that you should address. Fixing this problem will increase the chances of people buying your products or performing some other desired action.
Naturally, “visitors” refers to the people who visit your site. This will tell you how effective your marketing efforts have been. If you have a low number of visitors, you can increase that through a number of ways, including search optimization for critical key words, pay-per-click marketing, affiliate advertising, banner advertising, press releases and the like.
There are virtually hundreds of other reports on Web metrics that you can acquire from Web analytic systems such as scenario analysis, bounce rates, entry and exit pages, first time versus repeat buyers and others. But the first five mentioned above comprise the most important ones that you should consider.
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